I'm with you on the installing of plastic I changed the consumer unit in my house early last year and I bought plastic Crabtree high demand split load consumer unit off Ebay for £20 and I had all the spare mcbs in the back of the van I know its installed correctly neatly and all terminals are torqued correctly so what's the problem as you say the installing of metal consumer units only covers shit do called sparks backs but even when they poorly install them it still doesn't I think the industry should be regulated just like gas is.
Better regulation is certainly required. A change of materials will do nothing to stop electrical fires, and as an electrician I'm certainly not ripping out my plastic enclosures to replace them with steel; I'll sleep soundly at night knowing that the equipment I have is installed and maintained appropriately. Prevention is better than cure, and a steel enclosure is only a cure if a fire starts within it after it has already been installed correctly which is an oxymoron if ever there was one!
Hopefully Garo will see your video and export metal enclosure versions to the UK soon! You may even end up as the face of Garo in the UK and be paid with copious amounts of Guinness! 👍🍻
If Garo need a pretty face to sell their wares this side of the Irish Sea, then I suspect they can do better, although I would like it on record that I can absolutely be bought with Guinness. On anything.
@@mickbitchum4664 Thanks Ian, that's interesting. I go to Elex every year, but I don't recall seeing Garo there in the past! If they're exhibiting in the UK, then I wonder if they have a metal-clad range on the cards?? I'll look out for them this September!
Uprate the main fuse and then stand back and watch when the supplier electrician turns up and continues to use a old leaded cable of unknown size. Installs 2 meters and another fuse carrier. So you end up with 2 fuse carriers with 100amp each and the old leaded supply cable. Seen that too many times. Seems the only thing the supply company care about is the capacity of the transformer and the main wires going down the street. The branch wires to each house seem of little concern in most cases.
I wouldn't install a shower that is rated less than 10.8kw. Mira Sprint for example. Leaving aside the possibility of getting a 16mm load cable (x2) into this board what of the OCPD rating at 40 amps ?
@@dsesuk If ordinarily the maximum demand for an installation exceeds that of the supply fuse but you have have a priority unit fitted. Do you make some sort of reference on the EICR/EIC?... If you had two electric shower circuits running at 9 kW each but the current limiter (priority unit) only allowed say 15 kW, would your maximum demand for these two circuits be 15 kW or 18kW?
@@ashmanelectricalservices4318 I see what you're asking. I'd go by what the priority unit allowed, or the rating of the highest load as although they're two circuits only one can be fully energised. So if there was an 8kW and a 9.5kW shower being shared by one of these, then my maximum demand would be 9500/230 = 41A. I'd ignore the 8kW shower as it pulls less and only one load can be used at any one time.
@@dsesuk Very good, I thought there was an Irish link there somewhere after watching your video about Irish innovations and a few others. Glad you got a few pints in, its impossible here now since the pubs are still closed with lockdown. Surviving on cans at home the past few months myself. Hard times ;-(
@@willkndy Cans at home were the norm for me anyway Will; I'm several to the good tonight already! But stay safe, and hopefully you'll be retching up the black stuff in a pub toilet again before you know it!
Just for a laugh did you get a quote to upgrade your supply? United utility's quoted a customer of mine £9500 to upgrade a supply from 63A to 125A cable run 21Mts and the trench across his garden he had to have done himself.
Amendment 3 rant was next level, 🤣 Totally agree with the rationale that it is likely to be causing more problems than initially existed prior to it’s introduction.
I would have fitted: - a flow switch into the cold supply to the shower. - a _throw-over_ contactor at the CU. When the flow switch activates - the shower is *on* - then the contactor energises throwing current only to shower (priority). When the contactor is de-energised, the current runs to another shower, or the heating system, or high current drawing appliance like an EV charger. Simpler and cheaper.
I designed a "Dumb" version of this for one of my customers who lived up a mountain. He had had his cutout fuse (60a) blow twice and it didnt take me long to find out why. He had an extensive hydroponic greenhouse setup (all kinds of fancy exotic plants, etc) and the system used several large heating elements and fans. At times, this system would pull 28A leaving not enough left for house which included a 1000mm all electric cooker and a 10.5kw shower. I had no idea this product exsisted at the time so I hatched a cunning plan. I shoehorned in a 2nd set of outgoing 10mm conductors from the shower isolator and ran them into an FCU right next to it on the ceiling. From there I fused it down to 3A and ran 1mm t+e straight back to the consumer unit. From there, I fed the outgoing 32A circuit (for the greenhouse) through a normally closed contactor (40A rated, I always overrate my contactors) and used the 1mm cable to control it. Now whenever someone switches on the shower isolator, the contactor opens and the greenhouse power is cut thus removing the additional load. I even completely ommited the greenhouse supply from my diversity calculations as the shower was the more significant load. Anyway, it worked like a charm. I have not heard of anyone else doing anything like this - would be interested to know if anyone else has done/seen similar.
I too preferred plastic enclosures, they provide insulation by their very nature. However, I also prefer glands for every cable, that wasn't always possible with some designs of boards. Cracking vid!
Agree to an extent plastic vs metal. But THANK FUCK, that someone finally said that a "normal person" can buy and install a board with fuck all questions asked!
Priceless, great unit. Agree on. Plastic vs metal boards. Besides lots of plastic units did have flame retardant materials. But they were not the ones tested to support amendment 3. Competence is what is missing from the regs 👍 never change Dave🤣
Dave give the cowboys the keys to your lady knicker draw , first come first served Unless Nigel is stuck out of back end of her ... will this board come in 🧐🧐🧐
No, this thing is my only experience of their stuff. I'd never heard of them until 2013 when I had a client trying to shoehorn additional showers into his property and I had to find a way for it to cope!
I’m from Northern Ireland and the very odd time you come across one that’s has made its way up here, seen one 2 weeks ago next one I see I’ll take a few pictures.. the main switch is a 63a fuse in a strange holder that you 1/2 turn and pull out to isolate the board.. more like something you would get in a shit hotel
Sadly, Reg. 536.4.203 in 18th Edition scuppers that as the components within the enclosure need to be type tested for that enclosure, so stuffing Garo gear into, say, a Hager Amendment 3 DB would still leave you falling foul of BS7671.
@@dsesuk way i see it metal can burn an cause fires just like plastic, only difference is that with a metal enclosure is a fire might smoulder for ages inside the box before catching surrounding woodwork alight an by then people are already possibly being affected by the fumes from the burnt wiring, an the chances of the fire going into the wall space is just as great as a plastic unit burning,
@David Savery, Very eloquently put! There is too much Ephesus put on 'compliance' (blindly) without real technical knowledge. Your reference to #E5 Group has been noted and only gives you more credibility in my very simple opinion. Thanks once again for your honesty. Perhaps more of us should take a closer look in the mirror before waving the finger!!
plastic cu look better and they have usually the transparent plastic cover where you can see the breakers and it stays up when you need to do something wheras the metallic ones dont and the metalic cu look all the same
Very true. Cylinders seem to be out of fashion however, as everyone seems to be pulling them out in favour of combi boilers and instantaneous hot water solutions! I still have one, but the demand on it with two teenage daughters means an electric shower is just more practical.
Yes of course by having heat on demand you avoid the situation where you run out of hw but I can see peak demand on the distribution (not to mention generation) system be coming a big problem in the near future, with electric cars etc... there will need to be smart ways to manage this issue. Of cause pv will help if used correctly.
Agree about the issue regarding Car Charging. A lot of talk about how good Electric Cars are but next to nothing about how all the homes need to be wired up to charge one.
To date I have only fitted two, one was in 2013 when plastic was still permitted, the other is in my own house post Amendment 3, but I just went ahead and ignored it as I accept the risk (there being none in my opinion). If I had to install one for someone else, I'd either need to find a metal Garo enclosure type tested for these guts, or go with an alternative (such as the Eaton gear in an Eaton enclosure as shown in the SocketToEm snap in this video).
Since 18th edition, I believe that you can not get away with a type A RCD for a car charging unit (unless the charger itself has provision to guard against dc greater than 6mA) and you have to use a Type B RCD (that will still operate if the vehicle allows > 6mA onto the supply cable). Some type B RCD’s are type A’s with additional electronics integrated into the same unit so that it will trip with dc currents >6mA. Just saying. The Garo unit looks useful - you could buy the unit and then put the controls within a metal enclosure for not much extra cost.
I defer to the PodPoint peeps for their requirement for a Type A RCD for my car charger (installed under 17th Ed: A3) so I can't comment on that. As for stuffing Garo gubbins into a different enclosure, the hangover comes with Reg. 536.4.203 under 18th Edition which requires the clever stuff inside the box to be type tested for use with the box. It would be okay if a metal enclosure made by Garo could be sourced, but I haven't found such. Another option of course is to site the whole Garo thang, plastic box an' all, into a larger steel enclosure, but it's giving me a pain in the balls just typing about it!
Thanks Devlin, that looks like an interesting product. I hadn't come across it before, but it may be worth a further look. I'm seeing pricing around £150 inc VAT in some places.
If the problem is only not blowing the supplier fuse, a simpler solution woldn't be install a breaker instead of the main switch in the consumer unit, rated of the same amps as the supplier fuse, so if you exceed the maximum load it will trip before you blow the fuse?
These protective devices are designed to be the last resort and to cut the power in the event of a fault, not in the event of normal operation. If normal operation is exceeding the limit of the supply and forcing the protective device to operate, then you have an issue with the loading and design of the electrical installation. It would not be acceptable for a 'nuisance trip' to occur because you're trying to take more from the supply than it was designed for.
David Savery Electrical Services Good point. I think these Breakers will allow a higher current than the cable really wants through it for a bit longer than is optimal too.
when my dad was looking for a garage consumer unit (so that he could sort out the mess that is the single RCD in the consumer unit, the garage consumer unit would have an additional RCD in it so that there is no longer a single RCD, and three of the circuits would be moved over into the new enclosure) and the first one he got was, and I quote "made for the Chinese market"
I was so lucky in that just before the regs changed I managed to buy hundreds of non-combustible plastic CU’s from a guy on Gumtree. They look just like the original plastic CU’s but they have non-combustible written on the box with a sharpie.... Still using them today!
Excellent video David. Informed content facts delivered without any dumbing down in your own original style Keep them coming mate. You should contact Garo and offer to be their Local distributor, just get them to shove it in a metal enclosure! You and Nigel would be rich beyond your modest needs if your liver holds out😀
Great, loved the opinions and banter ! There is an opportunity for some bright spark to start producing 'over boxes' in metal so that plastic units can be contained within a metal box thus complying with the new reg and this may make installing a plastic unit like yours be in compliance with regulations. Just a thought....
Great video, but I'm struggling to understand the circuit. From the section with the close up of the components, it looks as though the contactor is normally open. Does that mean it is powered until the load shedding shower relay detects load and de-powers the contactor? If so isn't that a bit inefficient (keeping the contactor semi-permanently powered)? It seems as though it should work in the opposite sense with the contactor normally closed and the load shedding shower relay powering it to open and disconnect the other load.... but then if the 6A MCB is switched off both loads would be connected which isn't how you described it. Any help with my obvious misunderstanding would be gratefully received ... Thanks.
Now for the first time I actually have to do this in a domestic setting (commercial industrial machinery is my normal realm) Efixx and yourself have been invaluable as always.
I was looking at the Meteor Electrical website and they supply twin and earth to the irish standard with fully insulated earths. Imagine not having to fart about sleeving the earths and how much time it would save us here in Blighty.
would someone care to explain to me why the example at 9:30 is a bad one? is it because the wholes are ungrommeted / without a gland , the tail from the meter too long / not anchored down ? what am i missing doesn't seem too bad to me
Top of enclosure not to IP4X, no tails gland, no strain relief on tails, no grommet around some metal edges, tails not secured, tails mounted across face of meter preventing ease of reading and bonding cable insecure. More on this example can be found here: www.dses.co.uk/index.php/personal-blog/178-cowboy-competition-6
@@dsesuk a reply from the man himself , i feel so honoured :D Thanks a lot for the quick reply and the great info , your articles are always top notch. hope you have a great one
@@gabrielman7 You wouldn't feel so honoured if you could see me right now sitting in my underpants in front of the computer surrounded by empty lager cans.
now then, don't get me wrong here, but i'm sick of going in to jobs behind so called NIC chaps, like only 2 weeks ago, that have completely broken regs. should i be reporting them or the client reporting them? not all NIC chaps but quite a few just do rough jobs.
There are bad installers with all the CPS schemes. None of them have any means for reporting poor work, and they'll only take a complaint seriously if the homeowner is driving it (and even then their response is not very effective). Naming and shaming is tempting, but can leave you open to legal action. It's a sad state of affairs, but apart from showing a client why the job is bad and warning them off using the same guys again in the future, there's little you can really do about it.
Please register your complaint to the relevant authorities by dialling 999 from your telephone, giving your full name and address, and asking for detective sergeant Fuchstick.
Great way to handle maximum demand issues. Thanks for sharing David, a similar setup might come in handy. In the Netherlands the only affordable three phase service boasts 3x 25A and heat pumps and electric cars are really becoming popular. One can imagine a three phase version of the Garo product would do the trick. Thanks!
Electric cars are interesting. Despite having one, I'm not convinced they're the future, at least not with batteries that take hours to properly charge. I reckon some kind of charged liquid is more practical; something whereby you can pull up at a service station, have the discharged stuff pumped out, and a new charged liquid pumped in. Nigel reckons he's seen something on it. Either that, or batteries that can be charged quickly at service stations.
WTF are all the electric codes in the world being driven by Manufacturers wanting to sell more pricey equipment? Here in the US most houses now use plastic (fire resistant boxes) for switches and outlets (even for 230V appliances) , where IMHO heat from poor or aged connections fire is more likely.
It's nuts that we can't agree as a species and different territories have different requirements. Manufacturers were, I think, largely resistant to the change as they had to retool their lines and ship out their surplus before the regulatory requirements changed, but dangerous workmanship remains dangerous, and a change of outer material isn't going to magically make things any safer.
One Manufacturer may have driven the change, all the rest had to play catch up. Here in the states, a Whole House GFCI (RCBO to those across the pond), does not meet the codes. They now require for built in dishwashers. Also we have strict rules. They can't be in cupbords or behind equipment (You do have 'isolators' , but they are not always in plain view.). Forget placing fuseboards any place except at eye height with a 3 foot free space in front. OTOH I really like the square rigging of wires. We now have to use hundreds of 'nail plates' to protect wires from nails and drywall screws.
Exceptional content as usual. I wonder if a load sharing device is available with which to monitor overall load etc and prioritise under preset parameters. Seems like a niche in the market..... How much lego do you have and can you knock something up?
Thanks Peter, and interesting you should mention that as I was recently wondering about some kind of load monitor for the car charger. With all this IoT stuff though, I wouldn't be surprised if we started finding it appearing in future consumer units for granular monitoring and control from a smartphone or tablet!
@@dsesuk It seems like a logical solution really but then this modern world we are being forced to live in sometimes seems a little illogical. :) anyhoo, many thanks.
I think the amendment 3 was more to do with faulty mcb's catching fire and breaking out of the enclosures, I remember a couple of recalls on the trade counters because of dodgy Chinese mcb's.
Maybe, there have been various recalls in the past, MK and Lewden being ones in recent memory, but I believe London Fire Brigade were the ones pushing for change based on their analysis of where domestic electrical fires had broken out, and I think the issue was down to poor workmanship/maintenance and enclosures ill equipped to contain the hot stuff either because they weren't of sufficient quality or were knocked so full of holes they were better ventilated than an open barn in a Kansas tornado. Some fool punching out dirty great holes in an Amendment 3 enclosure is sorta defeating the purpose of installing the thing, and there's little monitoring or comeback after they've taken the money and fled.
@@dsesuk I'm probably a bit more cynical than you I think 1. The big companies don't want to be liable for a component failure which causes a fire in a good installation. 2. They also get to sell a shit load more consumer units.
British Gas are the worst for saying that stuff doesn't comply. Had one case where they refused to fit a new boiler because there was no RCD. Only there was. It was in a separate enclosure next to the old wylex board. It was even properly labelled. the upshot being British gas lost out on the work and another plumbing company made lots of money on it
I think everyone has their own BG horror stories. I had to reconnect a cooker hood for a pensioner a few months ago after BG disconnected it for 'non compliance with the wiring regulations' and quoted £250 to put right. Except it was demonstrably compliant, and I provided a certificate for its re-connection.
@@dsesuk BG have converted two of my neighbours in Harborne, Birmingham to TT for no obvious reason. Another customer in Moseley paid BG £600 to run main bonding to her incoming water service. The pipe was of course plastic.
Just a thought.. if there was room then why not put the whole schbang (plastic cu an all) into a metal enclosure? Surely this would comply even if it looked like a dogs dog's dinner and was £100 more expensive than necessary.
Doing that is an option, but where's the advantage for me in my case? It would cost more, look worse and I'm confident enough in my own installation and maintenance that it isn't a fire risk anyway. I'd be going to the effort just for tickbox compliance with a regulation I believe is a nonsense!
@@noskills9577 Ah, well, this is the dilemma we're all in. What I'm prepared to live with myself, and what I would put in for a client are two different circumstances, but yes, an exterior metal enclosure would be an ugly, expensive and, in my opinion, somewhat pointless solution to keep on side of the regulations!
If it's domestic, then Reg 421.1.201 applies, even in an outbuilding (as is my understanding, although if it's detached then you might get away with a risk assessment if there's no chance a fire could spread to the house and is unlikely to cause loss of life, e.g. a toolshed at the end of a garden rather than a guest room someone may be sleeping in). If you're putting an earth rod onto that outbuilding with a 100mA RCD in a metal enclosure, you must ensure the incoming line is isolated from that enclosure by means of a suitable insulated gland and that the wiring within from the gland point to the RCD terminal is minimal, has no contact with the enclosure, and is correctly torqued so it is unlikely to come loose. It's funny how for years a metal enclosure on a TT was a no-no, and now it's supposedly alright so long as you do it properly. If CU's were installed and maintained properly, plastic ones wouldn't be the fire risk they supposedly are!
@@AllenGoldsmith Should be. Again, it's all about keeping the line away from the metalwork that's earthed by the rod. The outgoing tails will be on the RCD side, although you'd still gland them. For the incoming SWA, you could terminate it onto something like a plastic Wiska box mounted adjacent to the enclosure as the armour would be earthed by the origin and you wouldn't want that in contact with the TT'd enclosure anyway. You could then bring the SWA cores into the RCD enclosure via a gland with the inner sheath still intact (the white/black PVC between the cores and the armour). Once in, cut back the inner sheath to expose the cores close to the termination point, so the length of single insulation is kept to a minimum and away from the metalwork.
I had the DNO do that once after performing an EICR and verifying the tails and earthing were up to snuff. I think we went from 60 to 80A. Can't remember why now, it was a while ago. Presumably they were running more loading than I was comfortable with and there was no reason not to upgrade.
I'm irish electrician an I hav used these for two showers in a home a couple of times. there great for off the shelf. But garo isn't a great brand here.
Very interesting, Pistol Pete was saying similar. I hadn't come across them until 2013 when I fitted my first priority board. I take it you guys still get to install plastic enclosures and managed to avoid the whole metallic debacle??!
I thank you sir, and may I take this opportunity to apologise in advance for the drunken behaviour of me and my wife when we're visiting the Emerald Isle later this year!
@PETER WILSON hi Peter as far as I know it's just garo that do them. Iv put in say 10 of these and got 3 call backs to faulty rcbos... which I change for a Hager. But it would be pretty easy to change over from plastic to steel. They really are handy and easy to install.
David is the maximum demand purely your cutout fuse size say 80 amps for an installation and how does diversity work in relation to this even two electric showers on the go and the usual ring circuits and what have you wouldnt compromise that 80 amps would it ?? Great video btw your a funny guy 👍😂
Maximum demand is a funny old beast. I mentioned I have a 60A fuse, but you can see in the video that I have a lot of circuits here, so on paper, if we follow the guidance and calculations in the On Site Guide under Appendix A, my demand calculation would actually be much higher than my fuse should theoretically be capable of passing! And that's the trouble, you can have two identical houses with the same number of sockets and the same appliances, but if house one has a single 32A ring, and house two has two 32A rings, then on paper house two has a higher maximum demand going by Appendix A. When it comes to maximum demand, you can either: calculate it roughly according to OSG Appendix A and assume loads (e.g. 100W per fitting for lighting), *or* calculate it more exactly according to OSG Appendix A but apply known loads (actual loads known to be on site), *or* use the rule-of-thumb of adding up all MCB's and multiplying by 0.4 (can't remember where this comes from or how 'official/accepted' it is, but people do it), *or* record it by measurement by leaving a clamp meter on MAX setting and recording what the maximum value was over an average period (say 24 hours). I've employed all these methods in the past, but usually most domestic premises are fine with their demand until the homeowner wants to whack on a much larger single load such as a shower or car charger, and that's when you need to really start looking at what's already there and if it can cope.
Garo are definitely missing a trick here... Lets hope the likes of Hager and Crabtree don't catch on and construct a priority unit that's BS 7671 compliant.
Priority choice certainly the obvious thing where shower might compete with EV. I'd select fist-come, first served variety if it were competing showers.
Yes, most homes in Ireland have 63A main circuit breaker, but I think the main fuse from the ESB is 80A. Originally from Ireland myself and completed my apprenticeship there, but I live in Sweden now so everything isn't 100% fresh in my memory. I was wondering when I saw your video with the multiple showers whether a priority switch might be a good solution, actually. Great video again! Thanks.
@@dsesuk uprate the fuse? F'in eon just installed a "smart" meter and it was only after they left I noticed they replaced our nice 100A fuse with a 60A. Just about to connect a 40A supply to my new office/workshop/mancave :(
@@timballam3675 surely eon should know better. The main fuse is DNO property. I have issues with UK power. We had to call them out for a meter board replacement, water ingress meant the board was rotting. I told them it was getting in because the door to supply box does not form a good seal. 6 men turned up shoved expanding foam in every possible hole and spunked silicone all around the box. The water was and still is getting in through the door....... Knob ends.
